Freshbrook Church Podcast | 08Mar26 | Passion | Phil Bailey

Phil Bailey continues our series of talks from the Gospel of Luke - Passion (How Jesus founded an everlasting kingdom upon love, humility and sacrifice).    

Today's passage is - Luke 20: 41 - 21: 4.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The first reading is from Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, Rule in the midst of your enemies, your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning's womb. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest for ever in the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge nations, heaping up the dead, and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Then Jesus said to them, Why is it that he said the Messiah is the son of David? David himself declares in the book of Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. David calls him Lord, how then can he be his son? While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing rows and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. They devour widows' houses, and for a show they make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely. As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. Truly I tell you, he said, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All his people gave their gifts out of their wealth, but she gave out of her poverty and put in everything she had to live on. This is God's word, and we thank him for it.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Thanks, Nicola, also. Okay, hello again. Um good to see you all. Uh we're gonna spend some time thinking on how uh Psalm 110 and Luke 21, Luke 20 and 21 fit together. Um let me lead us in prayer first. It exalts Jesus. And it puts down the proud and the haughty among human beings, but it exalts those who are humble, who truly love you and are devoted to your work. And I pray that you would so move among us by your spirit this morning that we would see more clearly the glory of Jesus, your Son, that we would all be more fully devoted to his work with humble and glad and adoring hearts. Amen. Okay, well, when respected people give their opinion or their verdict on something, usually everyone in the room waits with bated breath, don't they, to hear what they're gonna say. That's true with shows like Strictly or Britain's Got Talent. When you wait on tender hooks to find the judge's verdict on a performance, and even more so when they leave those really annoying, long, deliberate pauses, and you're like, just get on with it. More seriously, you can imagine how many world leaders and business people and stockbrokers were sitting on the edge of their seats when they were waiting recently to hear the verdict of the United States Supreme Court on whether Donald Trump's tariffs, trade tariffs, were legal or not. Whatever you think of the decision, it's something that had global implications, and so you can imagine how so many people had a vested interest in this. They really wanted to hear what the judge had to say. So when the respected judge gives their verdict, people usually sit up and listen. And the point that we've reached in Luke's gospel, I would suggest, is just such a moment. And so it is very much in our interests to listen very carefully to what Jesus says. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I introduced Jesus's arrival at the temple in Jerusalem, and I tried to show how he was fulfilling the prophetic words of Malachi chapter 3, verses 1 to 5. And although Luke never quotes Malachi directly, Jesus' words and his actions in Luke chapters 19 to 21 fit very well with Malachi's prophecy. Jesus comes not only as a man and Messiah, but I would suggest as God to his temple. And he comes like a refining fire to cleanse, to clear the temple, driving out the wicked. And though it looks at first like Jesus is on trial in chapter 20, as the leaders bombard him with questions and try to trap him into saying something incriminating, Jesus, I would suggest, puts them on trial. He turns the tables on them with his questions and answers, he exposes their errors and their unfitness to lead God's people, and he testifies against their wickedness. Again, Malachi chapter 3, verse 5. So we can view, I think, much of Luke chapters 19 to 21 as God putting Jerusalem on trial. And I don't think that's the only lens through which we can view these verses, but I think it's an important one. And we've reached the climax of that trial here at the end of chapter 20. Jesus has silenced all of his opponents with superior wisdom and understanding of God's words. He has evidenced his authority as Messiah and teacher, and even hinted that his authority is God. And now he fully takes charge of proceedings. No more questions, no more interruptions. He speaks, firstly, to underline his authority from the Old Testament scriptures themselves. And then, secondly, as judge, he announces his verdict on the guilty in Jerusalem and he commends the innocent in Jerusalem. The detailed sentencing, the actual punishment that will come upon the wicked, follows next week from verse 6 of chapter 21 onwards. So firstly, let's see how Jesus as judge underlines his authority in chapter 20, verses 41 to 44. So having silenced his opponents, it's Jesus' turn to ask a question. Verse 41. Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? And presumably he's asking the whole crowd, though obviously the Jewish teachers and leaders are still present. And it's an important question. Jesus has already accepted the title son of David from a blind beggar back in chapter 18. He doesn't deny that he is David's son, and nor would we expect him to, because the Old Testament is so clear in places like 2 Samuel chapter 7 that the Messiah would be descended from Israel's greatest king, David. But what if the Messiah was more than just another king in David's line, albeit a mighty one? What if Jewish expectations of the Messiah back then were too small? Jesus quotes Psalm 110, verse 1, in which King David himself wrote prophetically of one of his sons who had come after him. The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. So David calls his own son Lord. And that is very striking in a patriarchal society where a son was virtually never above his father. Fathers remained the heads of their families usually as long as they lived, and sons always had to defer to them. But David honors this son as his superior, one who has authority over him. So at the very least, the Messiah is greater than David himself. And Psalm 110 goes on to make that clear in verse 6 that the Messiah would crush the rulers of the whole earth, or at least I assume those who are opposed to him, and he would judge the nations. So his reign would be global, whereas King David's reign was local to Israel and just the surrounding nations. But there's more. So in verse 4 of Psalm 110, it says, The Lord, as in Yahweh, the God of Israel, has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. And so the Messiah wouldn't just be a king, he would be a priest. He wouldn't just represent God's reign on earth, he would represent God's presence by mediating between God and the people, making intercession for them and atonement for their sins. That's the main part of what a priest did. If you want to know more about the significance of Melchizedek, I'd point you to Hebrews chapter 7. I'm afraid we've not got time to go into that now. But the key point is that the Messiah would combine two offices that were kept separate in Israel's history, king and priest. He would combine them and he would therefore represent God in a unique way forever. And yet, perhaps there's a hint of something even more. If we can have the next slide, please. There is an intriguing ambiguity in verse 1 of the Psalm. In Hebrew, it's Yahweh said to my Adonai. Yahweh is the divine name for Israel's God, meaning I am who I am. Older translations sometimes had it as Jehovah. In modern English Bibles, it's usually respectfully shown as Lord in capital letters. Adonai is the Hebrew word for Lord, denoting someone in a position of authority. So in the Hebrew, with these distinctions, it is clear that David views the God and the Messiah as distinct persons. Or does he? The title Adonai is often applied to Yahweh in the Old Testament. Verse 5 of Psalm 110 is an example. The Lord, Adonai, is at your right hand, i.e. at the Messiah's right hand. There, Adonai means Yahweh. And over time the Jewish people increasingly referred to God as Adonai instead of using his divine name because it was just deemed too sacred. So if someone was reading out Psalm 110 in the synagogue, they would be likely to say, Adonai said to my Adonai, sit at my right hand. And then this change became hardwired into the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was completed around 200 years before Jesus' time. There they didn't even try to translate the divine name into Greek. When it came up, they usually wrote Kyrios, which also means Lord. And all of this means that when Jesus quotes Psalm 110 in the temple verbally, there was perhaps some ambiguity about what the title Lord meant when it was applied to the Messiah. Was it simply a respectful title denoting authority? Or was it a claim to be more than human? Is the Messiah both distinct from Yahweh and one with him somehow? Now Jesus doesn't answer that question. Probably because if he did, the Jewish leaders would have seen it as blasphemy and they would have arrested him immediately. He's got a few more things to do before he can allow that to happen. So he just puts the question out there to get people thinking. But we've already seen in Luke's gospel that Jesus often speaks and acts as one who is more than a man. He forgives sins. He uniquely knows and reveals God the Father to us. And he cleanses the temple as if he owned the place. So I think it is reasonable to interpret Jesus' quotation of Psalm 110 as another hint, if not an outright assertion, of his divine authority. How should we apply this? If we can have the next slide, please. It means that we should accept the greatness of Jesus' authority, not simply over Israel, but over every nation on earth. Because Jesus alone, of all men, has the right to command our full obedience and to receive our unreserved worship. As we'll see shortly, giving him mere lip service is nowhere near enough. So will we sit up and listen when Jesus pronounces judgment, positively or negatively? With such authority, those whom he condemns are truly under the wrath of God, no matter how successful or respectable or right they may appear in the world's eyes. This was certainly true of the Jewish teachers of the law. They were highly respected in Jewish society, but many of them at least were about to receive Jesus' unreserved condemnation. In contrast, those whom Jesus commends are truly pleasing in God's sight, no matter how insignificant or unimpressive or wrong they may appear to the watching world. The poor widow at the end of our passage was certainly insignificant to almost everyone in Jerusalem, but she is the one whom Jesus singles out as worthy of commendation. Now, if this is true, then appearances can be very deceptive. And there are many people around us, possibly even in this room today, who are deluded, sadly, tragically deluded, in thinking that they will go to heaven. If we want to avoid a nasty shock on Judgment Day, we must understand the kind of religion that is truly pleasing to God. And Jesus' judgments about the teachers of the law and the poor widow are very, very revealing about the kind of religion God values and is pleasing to him. So will we pay close attention to what comes next? So secondly, we see the guilty exposed and condemned in verses 45 to 47. If we can have the next slide, please. Now Jesus, as judge, proceeds to announce his verdict on the guilty in Jerusalem. He has the teachers of the law in his sights, and these were the Jewish scribes who painstakingly copied out Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, by hand. They didn't have printing presses. And they also acted a bit like lawyers today, but specializing in divine law. So they would advise people on their religious duties, they would give interpretations of Torah, they would write out legal documents, they would manage these people's estates when they died. Now Jesus wasn't saying that every single scribe in Jerusalem was bad. He was observing a general trend. And since he makes a similar criticism of the Pharisees in Luke chapter 11, I think it's safe to assume here that he he has the wider Jewish leadership in sight in general, not just the scribes. Again, not all of them, but many. What was wrong with them? And in short, that their religion was an elaborate self-serving facade. An elaborate self-serving facade. Verse 46. They like to walk around in flowing robes which looked impressive, which flaunted their wealth, they cost a lot of money to buy. Perhaps a little like people today who always insist on wearing the best designer labels or the most sort of elegant formal wear in order to impress and get compliments. The scribes loved to be greeted respectfully in public. And I can't help thinking of the titles that religious teachers have taken for themselves in some church traditions. Most reverend, your eminence, your holiness. Now I'm not saying that those things are automatically and always wrong, but you can see how it could become a problem. Even the title pastor can be worn as a self-exalting badge of power and prestige in some churches rather than symbolizing humble service. The scribes also loved the best seats at fancy banquets and in synagogues. They wanted to be nearest the front or nearest the host to show how important they were. And it reminds me of the temptation that those of us who preach have to want to be invited to speak at other churches or at conferences or on retreats to make a name for ourselves, to build a platform and show that we're important. And then the scribes devoured widows' houses, Jesus says in verse 47. And it's harder to understand his exact meaning here. Some Jewish writers from Jesus' time and afterwards complained of scribes being gluttons and abusing the hospitality of widows, or charging widows large fees, perhaps disproportionate fees for managing their deceased husbands' estates. Jesus may well have had such things in mind. It has also been suggested that the widow's offering in chapter 21, verse 2, was itself an example of scribal greed, as if the scribes were telling the widows to give more than was required to the work of God's temple. Now I guess that's possible, because apparently a few scribes were employed by the temple authorities and they were paid from the temple treasurers. But I don't think that was true of the majority. Many of them would have earned a living by doing second jobs. Whatever the case, many of them clearly took advantage of the widow's vulnerability. And it reminds me of prosperity gospel pastors today telling people, often desperately poor parishioners, that God will make them healthy and wealthy if only they'll give more money to that pastor's ministry and have enough faith. It's a pretty sick abuse of power. Finally, in verse 47, Jesus highlights how the scribes made lengthy prayers for show in pretense. Not for God, but to impress other people. Now I don't think this means that we should condemn all lengthy prayers, because some people have just got a lot of good things to say to God, and that's fine. But there is that temptation to impress, isn't there, if we are praying publicly in church? And I think there's a similar temptation, perhaps, you to turn up at all the right meetings at church or to want to be on several rotors at once to win approval or influence. So, in short, what Jesus condemns in the scribes is self-serving religion. Religion that's primarily designed to enhance our own interests and our own position in the community. And as we've seen, there are plenty of these temptations still today. Such religion, though, does not honor God because it is not done for God. It is actually a hypocritical abuse of religion because it is treating God and his name and his word and his church as a means to our own self-exalting ends. And God hates it. Jesus says in verse 47, these men will be punished most severely. So will we heed Jesus' warning? Now, you might be a devout Christian who has sought to follow Jesus faithfully for many years. And if so, or even if you were born again only yesterday, you and I are in a different camp to the scribes. Inasmuch as we have been forgiven such sins, Jesus paid for all of them when he died on the cross. So we are no longer defined by those sins. We are defined as holy and dearly loved children of God. Treasure that thought. Ask yourself, where is that temptation strongest for you? And ask God to give you a soft and humble and teachable heart so that he may lead you away from these things. Let me suggest as well that the antidote to self-serving religion is to spend much time reflecting on Jesus' death on the cross. Jesus died as our substitute, as the suffering servant of the Lord who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And on the one hand, that tells us that you could be the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury, but if you practice your religion primarily to impress other people, it is so far from impressing God that he will treat you similarly to how he treated Jesus on Judgment Day. You will be cut off from his favor, his face, his blessings entirely if you don't repent. All human efforts at religion are like filthy rags in God's sight. We cannot impress him. We can only cling to the cross and confess our sin and trust that Jesus paid the penalty for all such wickedness. But the cross also shows just how far God was willing to go to save us from sin and from self-serving religion. God the Father was willing to send his only begotten Son, whom he loved more than anything in the world. I don't know what is your most precious possession? Is it a family member? A parent? A spouse? A child? Is it a family heirloom? Is it something you own or an achievement? Can you imagine sacrificing that for someone whom you find utterly offensive? That is what God did for us. And what about Jesus' love? He was 100% on board with the Father's plan to save us from before the dawn of time. He went to the cross willingly, saying in John chapter 10, verse 18, No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. And he did it for his enemies. Now I couldn't really think of a contemporary example for this because right now, much of what I see in the world is people bombing the hell out of their enemies. So can you begin to fathom how unique Jesus' love for us is? That this is how he treats his enemies? In short, the cross frees us from self-serving religion by showing us how contemptible it is so that we learn to hate it. And the cross frees us from self-serving religion by showing us God's single-minded, wholehearted, all-or-nothing devotion to saving sinners from such delusions. And if we allow such love to sink into our hearts and minds by reflecting on the cross, we cannot help but begin to love God back with a more single-minded and whole-hearted and all-or-nothing devotion. We cannot help but begin to care more about pleasing God and less about impressing other people. Let's just take a moment to reflect on that before very briefly we we come to the widow, chapter 21. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast save in the death of Christ my God. May we be people of the cross. May we never get tired of hearing the old, old story. And would you please, please, please keep impressing it more deeply into our hearts and minds so that we would truly love and worship you with a devotion that truly honors you. Amen. Now finally, just by way of encouragement, chapter 21, we get to the second part of the judgment as I see it, the innocent commended. Though there is much false devotion among the religious leaders of Jerusalem, the city is by no means devoid of true faith. And in verse 3, Jesus does what judges sometimes do in court, highlighting the actions of those who have acted with courage or integrity in a case. He highlights the actions of this poor widow who put into the temple treasury all the money she had left in the world. Two small copper coins. Now they weren't worth much at all. About one hundredth of a labourer's daily wage. So in today's terms, if if minimum wage in the UK is £12.21 per hour, if a typical working day is eight hours, then a day's wage would be £97.68. On that basis, the widow's offering today would have been like giving 98 pence, not even a full pound. I don't even know what that would buy today. Yet Jesus says she gave more than all the rich folks who were chucking in handfuls of silver and gold. Verse 4 Many of them gave what they could afford to spare, presumably without endangering their accustomed standard of living. But the widow, who had nothing to spare, still gave all she had to live on. Hers was therefore the greatest sacrifice, and hers was therefore the greatest gift in God's sight. We could even say that she was the one in Jerusalem who acted most like Jesus himself by giving all out of love for God. Now, whether or not she was giving too much, following abusive teaching by the scribes, it doesn't really matter. What matters is her motives. And Jesus doesn't give any reason to doubt that her motives were pure. She gave, presumably, because her heart was totally set on God, on his name, on his glory, on his temple, which came first in her life. And so she trusted God to provide for all her needs until the day he called her home. Unlike the scribes, her religion was all about serving God. And she we should take great comfort that Jesus sees and commends such sacrifice. Jesus sees when we make similar sacrifices out of devotion to Him today. Whether it's income or standard of living sacrificed to fund gospel ministry and mission, whether it's sleep sacrificed for the sake of prayer, something Jesus did often, whether it's reputation sacrificed for boldly owning your faith in public or among skeptical family and friends, whether it is comfort sacrificed for the sake of painful obedience personally, Jesus knows, he sees it, and he delights in it. And when we do it just for him, not drawing attention to it, he promises elsewhere in Matthew's gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, our reward in heaven will be great. Our reward in heaven will be great. At that final judgment, when we give an account for what we've done, he will commend faithful sacrifice that was motivated by devotion to him. And he won't compare you with others on that day who gave more because he'd given them more in the first place. He will measure it only by what he entrusted to you, and he will commend every sacrifice made out of love for him. So will we live for his pleasure and for his condemnation both now and on that day? There is no surer reward, and there is no greater joy. Amen.